The ability is behaving “differently than intended.”
One of the most popular agents in VALORANT has a pretty weird bug right now.
Phoenix’s Curveball ability, which allows him to throw out an orb that can blind players that see it, is behaving “differently than intended,” according to the official VALORANT Twitter account. Riot said a hotfix will make its way into the game “as soon as possible” to address the bug.
While Riot did not go into detail about how the ability is behaving differently, Morello, the lead character designer for VALORANT, responded to a frustrated player on Twitter who explained the issue.
“Phoenix is ruined now,” the player said. “Like in order to flash through doors effectively, you have to stand 10 feet away and can’t hug the wall, or else you’ll flash yourself or the whole team. Or even your flash goes behind the enemy on other side. Pls think about reverting.”
Morello confirmed it was an unintentional bug and that the developers would fix it, although he did not specify when the fix would be coming.
This bug seemed to come with Patch 1.06, which focused on nerfing the “air shotgun” by decreasing all shotguns’ accuracy when a player is in the air. The spread penalty in the air was nearly tripled in the patch, effectively neutralizing any accurate shots with the shotguns when jumping or falling.
Neither Riot nor Morello specified when a hotfix would come for the Phoenix bug.